Information Management: Style Manuals and Citing Resources

Style Manuals

Style manuals provide advice and recommendations on how written reports are to be presented. Some will offer help with English grammar and most will indicate the preferred forms of textual layout e.g. spacing, abbreviations, footnotes, bibliographies, and so on. The style manual you adopt will often be determined by the publication you are writing for, or by your discipline or field. Some of the most widely used manuals of writing style are:
The ACS Style Guide: A Manual for Authors and Editors.
From the American Chemical Society. [Dana Reference Desk]
Documentation Guide - APA
Based on the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 4th edition. [Dana Reference Desk]
CBE Style Form Guide
Based on Scientific Style and Format: The CBE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers from the Council of Biology Editors. [Dana Ref, on order]
Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition.
Refer also to the Chicago Guide to Preparing Electronic Manuscripts. [Dana Reference Desk]
A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 6th edition. Kate Turabian.
[Dana Reference Desk]
Using Modern Language Association (MLA) Format
Based on the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, 2nd edition, from the Modern Language Association. [Dana Reference Desk]
Uncle Sam - Brief Guide to Citing Government Publications
Based on The Complete Guide to Citing Government Documents: A Manual for Writers & Librarians by Garner and Smith. [Dana Reference Desk]
Citing Internet Resources

With print resources, the most common elements used in the bibliographic citation are: author, title, source (book or journal title), volume and issue number (where appropriate), publisher (for books), year of publication, and pagination. Citing Internet resources adequately involves some adaptation of these elements. You still need to determine the author and title of the resource, and indicate the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) or Web address as completely as is practical. You should also provide some indication of how current the information is, by citing the "last revised" or "updated" date from the Webpage, and when you retrieved it.

For more specific examples, please refer to:
Ka-Neng Au, 11 Mar 2004